This game is a microcosm for the Giants’ season. Wasted talent, too many mistakes, too many missed opportunities and too much underachievement.
The Giants found themselves in a position to win this game despite the hole they dug for themselves. This was eerily similar to the situation for the entire season, where the Giants found themselves in a position to take first place with a win tonight despite digging a hole earlier in the season when they lost four straight games.
The most important Rule of this NY Giants blog is that Defense Wins Championships. The Giants defense was unable to make a stop when it counted and that is why they lost. With the exception of one sack strip (ruled a forward fumble), the Giants could not get pressure on McNabb. The Eagles have now won 4 in a row from the Giants. Our DL simply cannot get to McNabb.
Bill Sheridan inherited an excellent defense from Steve Spagnuolo. He has proceeded to degrade this unit into an unrecognizable mess of bad schemes and blown coverages.
The Giants deserve a lot of credit for fighting back and taking the lead 31-30. But apropos to the game and the season, the lead lasted all of one play when the Eagles answered with another TD on another defensive mishap.
Good
1) The offense was able to score points and help this team regain the lead 31-30 after recovering from two 14 point deficits.
2) The running game was effective. In short yardage the Giants were able to get first downs and get over the goal line for TDs.
3) Nicks, despite a dropped TD, comes right back and gets a big TD by breaking a few tackles.
4) Goff INT.
5) Hixon TD.
Bad
1) Almost NO PRESSURE ON McNABB. We said in the pregame on Friday that this was the key to the game. There was one play where NBC showed 4.2 seconds before McNabb through the ball, and he could have spent 8.4 seconds back there without nary a sweat. Accorsi’s legacy and blueprint was a dominating DL stopping the run and disrupting the timing of the passing game. It simply is not there.
2) Jacobs fumble takes a crazy bounce off a foot and goes 60 yards the other way for a TD.
3) Manning fumbles away a red zone opportunity after the Goff INT.
4) Jackson punt return for a TD.
5) Manningham’s sideline woes were well documented by Collinsworth. These are the growing pains of a very slow learner.
6) You need a stop, you put them at the 9 yard line, and they drive the ball 91 yards in 12 plays. Just like vs San Diego. Just like Atlanta. Horrid.
Ugly
1) We keep hearing about poor ‘communication’ between defensive players. This has to be bad schemes because this almost never happened under Spagnuolo. When you have good schemes everyone knows their responsibilities, but with this Giants defense there are way too many blown coverages. DeSean Jackson (6 catches, 178 yards) is good, but he is not that good. Maclin got hurt early and did not even play!
2) I would need a supercomputer to keep track of all of the blown coverages with wide open Eagles players making uncontested catches for huge gains. Inside the 2 minute warning of H1, there was the 3rd and 20 where Jackson gets 40+ yards . Inexcusable. Then on the same drive Celek sits down in a zone in the red zone and gets an EASY reception to the 1 yard line. The Giants defense did this again and again.
After the Giants beat the Atlanta Falcons, we stated that regardless of the victory, the Giants were going “nowhere” because it did not have defense. The Dallas loss to SD plus another potential loss vs the Saints means the Giants may still somehow get the 6th and last (wild card) spot into the playoffs because they win the tiebreak with Dallas. The Giants have the talent to win the last three games to secure a playoff spot. But you can wipe your a** with that playoff appearance. That is how much it is worth. The Giants gave up
31 to Dallas
48 to New Orleans
40 to Philadelphia
31 to Atlanta
26 to Denver (that could have been 40 or more)
45 to Philadelphia
Is it (lack of) talent or coaching? Carl Banks: “When you have 7 good players, you have to be better than this.. There is way too much talent.”
We want to see improvement in order to believe the Giants are headed in the right direction. Please do not sell anyone here on this blog with some kind of hope that if we can get that 6th wild card spot that we can parlay that into a Super Bowl lottery ticket. This team is as phony as a $3 dollar bill. This is not Giants football.
Last week we finally saw some energy and pride when new players were started. This week we saw once again the team’s true colors- shoddy defense that is an embarrassment to this franchise. If the players on this team were young, inexperienced or lacking in talent, we would not be as harsh in our disgust. We are disgusted because of the underachievement and this goes back to the coaching.
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